She was special.
I stopped to take a note while taking my morning stroll along South Beach. A young lady passed me by, and nodded. I returned the nod, finished my note, then continued my walk. The woman was quite a ways in front of me by that time. She stopped, pulled out a cell phone and apparently spoke to someone. Hence I caught up with her.
"Are you following me?" she turned to me and asked.
"No, but I would not blame a man for doing that," I replied and continued on my way.
"You looked like you were following me," she persisted, catching up with me. "Your were standing on the beach, then when I looked behind me, there you were, following me."
"I wasn''t following you. I''m just taking my morning walk down the beach. So there is no cause for you to be paranoid on my account," I said, and picked up my pace, but she stayed at my side.
"Paranoid? What do you mean?"
"I mean, you may be thinking too highly of yourself, although you are a very attractive woman."
"I don''t understand."
"Well," I adopted an academic mode, "paranoia is a modern phenomenon. The individual is inflated with a feeling of undue self-importance. On the one hand, she might think she is the Virgin Mary, adored by everyone. On the other hand, she might feel despised and persecuted by almost everyone, as if she were a prostitute. So delusions of grandeur and persecution both stem from a feeling of self-importance. Do you understand?"
"No."
"Think about it sometime, and you will understand," I suggested, and once again walked briskly out ahead of her.
"Wait!" she yelled, caught up to me once again, and stared fiercly into my eyes. "I thought you were following me! You''re a man," she prounounced, emphasizing ''man.''
"There, you see, you think a man is out to get you. And as I said, I would not blame him if here were following you, but not every man behind you is following you. What if a woman were behind you?"
"I wouldn''t be worried."
"There you go. But a man was behind you, in broad daylight on a crowded beach, with security bicycling on the sidewalk and cops cruising Ocean Drive. So you thought you were so important that some man, who happened to be walking a considerable distance behind you, would snatch your beach bag, or throw you down and rape you in front of everyone. Maybe you were paranoid."
"I see what you mean."
"Maybe you learned something."
"About what?"
"About yourself and other things."
"Like what? What can you teach me?"
"Like, there are two forms of believing one is more important than she is. But I can teach you something else, something along the lines of what I do when I think someone is following me down the alley on a dark night."
"What?"
"I go somewhere brightly lit, where there are people, then I stay close to them, and see if the man that I think might be stalking me stares at me as he passes me by or just goes on by without giving me notice. If you thought that I, a man, was stalking you just now, you could have walked close to that strong-looking fellow on the beach mat over there, and stopped and waited to see if I passed you by. If I stared at you in passing, you might be alarmed, especially if I drooled. But I am not like that. You are an attractive woman, a woman whom many men might follow, but I have avoided women so long that one would have to sit on my face to pique my interest."
At that the lady looked in my face almost frantically, as if she were in fact being raped.
"What else can you teach me?"
"I have an intuition about you. Forgive me for being so personal, but you could satisfy yourself in another way."
"That''s not the same."
"I don''t mean that. I mean you should be cool, interview a few men, pick yourself a lover for a week or two, get it out of your system."
"Would you please (make love to) me?"
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